Well, after 51 years of being there through bad times and even worse times mainly if the name change goes ahead I will not be renewing my pass. Bad health makes getting to games an increasing struggle and I have missed as many games as I have seen this season. But my ambition was to see City in the top flight and a cup final before I pop my clogs so will be there if we make it. I will be at the semi final as that is something else I have never experienced. I remember another fan, only 50 years old, who had been one of those in the days of 3 and 4 thousand crowds being taken ill in 2008. He was taken into hospital and briefly made an improvement. He hoped to be home to watch the play off, but worsened. The hospital let his family rig up a TV but he slipped into a coma on the Friday and died on the Tuesday not knowing we had finally made it to the top flight.Always grab the moment you never know if you will get another chance.
Season tickets sales will not be going up by 50%. That was newspaper talk and a veiled threat. it wont happen. I know money is tight and some people genuinely have not got £20 spare when the game can be seen live on ITV. But if a genuine supporter cannot get excited about an FA Cup Quarter Final and the chance of a Wembley Semi Final plus the decision to part with £20 is such a huge one then they are probably the type of supporter you don't want sat alongside you tomorrow.
You're explaining that to the wrong person, I'm not saying I believe it, I'm saying there'll be other people who do.
They have made progress with The Academy by appointing Swansea's number one. If we had some decent press this appointment would have made as many headlines as a new expensive signing. As for the CEO I thought he left for a job nearer home with less hours and no week ends ?
If people believe that they are hardly the type of person who would have bought a ticket in the first place. Its like those who don't go away 'because you can't get tickets' You can but it is an excuse that people who don't know will not argue against.
The Swansea chap has a very good record of improving youth set ups- as he has done with Swansea. It's a very good appointment- just what we need. However, what we really need is the location, the facilities and the investment- other wise we are doomed to play against Grimsby and Chesterfield Youth for evermore. As a club your Youth set up is judged on your grading and if you have a ramshackle token set up, you get to play the pauper clubs. Result: the better larkers will not join you, you don't produce any young talent. CEO: don't know the feller but appearing to lie or not being in the confidence of your bosses (read it as you wish) is poison for his cv.
Perhaps the new fella doesn't think the present Academy set up is as bad as we all think, him being the expert and not us ? The reasons you give for the last CEO may well be the reasons he wanted to leave ? Who knows ? We don't seem to have missed him.
Who knows what the new ex Swan's motives are? More money? New challenge? Personal reasons? Know some people who have kids in City's set up and who are uneasy about our 'modest' facilities. They want the best for their kids naturally, and put them before loyalty to HCFC. We all know (see Soton) that a youth set up can be a massive earner not just a drain on finances.
He was unemployed having left Swansea to seek a new challenge 3 months earlier. (About 2 weeks after they appointed someone else to do the same job)
Cannot argue with that. Would some investment into the set up at Ideal be more beneficial than a wholesale move out of the city somewhere ? It does need improving about that there is no doubt. I believe it will be. It takes times. And some of the present set up have had loads of time and produced very little. To expect one man to change it almost overnight is being a little unfair. At least a start appears to have been made. Which is more then can be said for previous regimes.
I'd say at youth setup you need a minimum of 5 years for it to start being noticable to the first team. Any player breaking into the first team is going to be 18/19, and any player over 13/14 that's going to PL standard is pretty likely to have been picked up by scouts for someone, so recruitment wise we've probably missed out on the best players. Bring the setup standards higher and more of the young kids will join us over travelling elsewhere and the improvement should creep up the setup a stage at a time. The best we can hope to do in the meantime is use the improved facilities to pick up the 16 year olds released by the biggest clubs as not good enough and try to do something with them in the 2 years like we managed to do with Cairney. (although hopefully as we're now a PL club we'd be recruiting better than Leeds cast offs so they'll still be players that can make it as PL players)
Was mentioned about planning applications, plans being drawn up, site identified etc Then reality kicked in.....
As far as I'm aware they just had an option on the site, but it ran out not long after the money did.
I recall Adam Pearson being asked about it when he came back. Described it as pie in the sky, along with a load of other stuff at the time.
